if i die, let me die
by tombombadillo
Summary: She knows this is her fault. She knows that those eyes, cold and blue and like ice, she's not seen them look like that, because of her, in a while. But now they're angry. Oh, they're so angry. But she doesn't know what to do


**This is what you get when I've had a crappy day and I'm in a bad mood. I'm probably not sorry.**

**Disclaimer: no.**

* * *

Blood is running down her temple, her lips are cracked and raw and bleeding, and she's pretty sure at least one of her hands are broken. Not that she feels it. Not that she can feel anything anymore. She's been numb for a good year and a half now, stumbling through the days on a kind of autopilot. Maybe it was that got her into this mess, maybe it's just no longer caring if she lives or if she dies has left her a little too lax when it comes to investigations. An abandoned warehouse would have set her alarm bells ringing, she would have waited for backup to arrive before she would have even thought about pushing the doors open. Would have. Before. Before that stupid day, and that stupid argument. Before she wouldn't have been ambushed in a dark corner, thrown around like a rag doll. Bruised and battered and broken, she's taped to a chair in a tiny and dark cell, the walls damp and mouldy. Waiting for her captors to come back. Waiting for a bullet in her skull. Through her heart. A rope around her neck. She's come to terms with it. They're going to kill her.

* * *

_She knows this is her fault. She knows that those eyes, cold and blue and like ice, she's not seen them look like that, because of her, in a while. But now they're angry. Oh, they're so angry. But she doesn't know what to do. It's not like she knew he was going to ask her to marry him when she cancelled dinner. He knew this case was big, knew that it was screwing with her head, even though she tried to not let it. And they'd finally got a break, an actual lead that actually made sense, and even though she didn't want to cancel, she had to phone him up. He'd seemed perfectly fine with it at the time, tossed it off with _you can make it up to me later _and his usual boyish charm. _

_But then she'd come home, found him sat outside her apartment. Looking for all the world like he'd just watched somebody kick a puppy in the head._

"_You have a key, you know." She laughs, trying to dig hers out of her pocket. He doesn't move, and she leans against the door, key in hand. "Castle?"_

"_I'm giving it back."_

"_Wh – Castle, what? What do you mean?"_

_He sighs, thumping his head back against the wall. "I'm giving you your key back. I don't want it."_

"_You're not making any sense." Kate replies, feeling the panic rising up in her chest._

"_Aren't I?" He stands up, pulls his key from his pocket and presses it into her open palm."I think I'm making perfect sense."_

"_Castle, you – Castle, are you – you-"_

"_I thought you'd got over this. I thought you'd stopped letting cases pull you away from this – from us. Kate, you'd – you promised that this wouldn't happen. And we'd had this dinner planned for weeks, and you said you'd be there and you- you cancelled two hours before. I thought that for once I'd be more important than a case. Just once. Just for a couple of hours. That's all I wanted. Hell, if this case really meant as much as it did, we could have just come back here after. If you'd just talked to me."_

_Kate clenches her hand around the cold metal of the key, the ridges digging into her flesh. "Castle, I-"_

"_Don't say you're sorry, Kate. Please don't." he shakes his head, turns to make his way towards the elevator. Leaving. He's leaving. He's leaving her_

"_Castle." She reaches out, hand tight around his wrist._

_He stops, but he doesn't turn to face her. "I was going to ask you to marry me, Kate. I thought you were ready for this."_

"_I am!" she insists, trying to pull him back, but he's always been stronger than her. "Castle, please. You can't go. You can't – not now."_

"_I've waited, Kate. I have waited for so long for you. I've waited, Kate, and I've tried to love you, and, hell, I do love you. Kate, you know I love you."_

"_You don't think I love you?" Kate whimpers, stepping towards him. "Is this what this is about? Castle, why would I even be here if I didn't love you?"_

"_I don't know, Kate. I honestly – I don't know. I thought I believed you .I thought I knew. But now I'm not so sure."_

_He pulls his arm free, Kate's arm falling to rest by her side limply. She watches him walk away, numbness creeping up from her fingertips. None of this makes sense. There's no reason in any of this. Maybe they'd argue, maybe they'd scream at each other, but they'd work out. They always work it out. Everything. But now Castle – Castle, who she loves, Castle who's written five and a half love letters to her, published and bound for all the world to see. Castle who waited, so patiently for her to realise, to open her eyes to see that maybe she didn't need to find justice for her mother, maybe she just needed something more to fight for. Fight for him, and for them, for the wedding and the children that she couldn't help but imagine late at night when his arm is around her waist and he's murmuring non-sensical words into her neck. She needs to fight for him now._

_She can't hope for running and catching the elevator, she can already hear it as it travels downwards, and she runs for the stairs, nearly going head over heels as she takes a corner a bit too fast and stumbles on the top step. He's out on the sidewalk, waiting in the pouring rain for a car, or a taxi, she doesn't know. Maybe he's just waiting for her to come and bring him back inside._

"_Castle, come back up. Castle, _please." _She steps out into the rain, dodges passing people until she's standing beside him, reaching to tangle her fingers with his. "It can't end like this, Rick. It _can't._"_

"_Maybe this was never supposed to last, Kate. Maybe we were just kidding ourselves."_

"No! _Castle, no, you said that it doesn't matter if we didn't make sense on paper." She makes him turn around. "You said! And I'm sorry, Castle! I'm sorry!"_

"_It doesn't matter anymore, Kate. None of it matters."_

* * *

"You're people aren't coming for you." The man spits, his face dirty and yellow, so close to hers. "They have no idea where you are."

Kate laughs, and to an outsider maybe it would sound slightly deranged, but she thinks she's bordering on the edge of insane and finds she really doesn't care. How long has she been sat here? Five days? It's hard to keep track. Maybe it's only been a day.

"You're going to die here." He hisses, his breath stale and washing over her flesh. It makes her skin crawl. "You're going to die here like the worthless bitch you are."

Kate turns her head towards him, fixes him with a steely gaze. "So kill me, already. What are you waiting for?"

"Because killing you now would put you out of your misery. And I want to make you bleed, Detective. I want to make you _hurt_."

"Good luck with that."

"_I would have said yes, you know." Kate says, so quietly he almost doesn't catch it. "If you'd just… ask me now, I'll say yes. I'd have always said yes. Castle, you _have _to know that."_

"_I can't, Kate. I can't ask you to marry me and have to constantly wonder whether I'm going to be put second to a case, over and over again. I don't want to be second best, Kate. I want to be the thing you come home to every night, I want you to leave work at the precinct and come home with me."_

"_You are. You are what I come home to everyday. Castle, _please-"

_He doesn't know what's rain and what is tears, closes his eyes against the onslaught of water, against the look of Kate's face, so utterly broken and_ hurting, _and it hurts, leaving like this. It's going to tear his heart into pieces and he's going to hate himself for it – but maybe he hates her more. He loves her, and he hates her and it's just one tangled mess of emotion in his head. He walks away from her. Walks away from them, from Nikki and Rook, from the precinct, from all the good he's done in the past six years. He's not concentrating, too caught up in his own irrational thinking, too caught up in goodbyes to even notice the don't walk, too caught up in her face to even notice the car barrelling towards him_

_He doesn't scream out when he's sent flying, doesn't cry out in pain as he lies on the cold wet tarmac, his body broken into too many pieces to stand any hope in fixing. He can't feel. He can't move. Lies there, watching the rain fall around him – on him – can't feel it. People around him are yelling – ambulance – 911 – screams and cries – maybe somebody recognises him – but it's all drowned out. Everything's drowned out by that earth-shattering scream that pierces his eardrums, makes his bones rattle, and now everything hurts. It's a searing pain inside his chest, all encompassing, is this what real heartbreak feels like? Is this what it feels like when everything you thought you knew is ripped so brutally from you?_

_There's a face above him, dark eyes, her mouth opening and closing, talking to him but he can't hear her. His vision is fading, in and out, black and blurry, white lights popping, the black creeping in, and he can't stop it. No matter how hard he tries, it's insistent. It lessens the pain, makes it duller, more manageable. And that's okay, when the world finally fades from view, it's okay. Everything's okay._

* * *

The cold press of the gun against her temple leaves her calmer than she's felt in months. At peace. Whether it's because she's going to see Castle again (maybe), or maybe because she'd no longer be living in a world without him. She wouldn't know. Wouldn't feel that pain anymore. It's been a week and a half. She knows that now, he keeps telling her that they're never coming for her. She's going to rot here. Rot here with a bullet in her head. And she can live with that. Or not. She doesn't care. The click of the safety coming off slows her breathing, she closes her eyes, ready, waiting.

He pulls the trigger.


End file.
